Stralsund

A Slavic fishing village called Strale, from the Polabian word for arrow, stood here in the Principality of Rügen, which passed to Denmark after the fall of Arkona in 1168. German settlers and merchants joined the settlement, and in 1234 Prince Wizlaw I granted it Lübeck law — the date Stralsund counts as its founding, making it the oldest town in Pomerania. Its success alarmed Lübeck, which burnt it down in 1249; the town was rebuilt behind a wall with 11 gates and 30 watchtowers, joined the Hanseatic League in 1293, and in the 14th century some 300 ships sailed under its flag.

The Thirty Years' War made it a fortress. In 1628 Wallenstein's imperial army besieged the city after its council refused to submit; Stralsund held out with Danish and Swedish help and took in the first Swedish garrison on German soil. From 1648 it belonged to Swedish Pomerania, and from 1720 to 1815 it was that province's capital. Brandenburg captured it in 1678, Charles XII defended it for a year in 1715, and Napoleon's army occupied it in 1807 before the Congress of Vienna gave it to Prussia in 1815.

American bombing in 1944 killed some 800 people and destroyed about 8,000 homes, and the Red Army entered the city on 28 April 1945. In East German times the state shipyard built vessels for the Soviet Union and prefabricated estates spread north and west, while the old town decayed. After 1990 it was thoroughly restored, and in 2002 it was listed with Wismar as a World Heritage Site. The shipyard went bankrupt in 2022 and the city bought the site, which now houses a business park.

Stralsund's identity is bound up with its brick and its sea. Of more than 800 listed buildings, over 500 stand in the old town, and the restoration that followed 1990 — by 2010 some 588 of more than 1,000 old buildings had been completely refurbished — is a matter of civic pride. The Swedish period is still visible: the Commandantenhus on the Alter Markt was the Swedish commander's headquarters, and the former Swedish government palace now houses the city's construction department.

The city's great annual festival looks back to its finest hour. The Wallensteintage, held in the old town each summer, celebrates the defeat of Wallenstein's siege of 1628. In the Sundschwimmen, up to a thousand swimmers cross 2.3 kilometres of the Strelasund from Altefähr on Rügen to the city. Theatre, opera, ballet and concerts are staged by the Theater Vorpommern, which the city has run since 1995 with Greifswald and Putbus, and St James' Church now serves purely as a cultural venue.

Sport has a local accent: the speedway team MC Nordstern Stralsund, based at the Paul Greifzu Stadium, won the German team championship in 2015 and 2022. Angela Merkel, whose Bundestag constituency took in the city, still has an office on the main shopping street.

The 2022 census counted about 54,000 people in Stralsund, well below the peak of more than 75,000 reached in 1989; the city lost over 15,000 residents by 2008 amid the upheaval that followed reunification. Many smaller villages around it have grown as people working in the city settled there instead, and in 2021 Greifswald overtook Stralsund as the largest city in the Pomeranian part of the state.

The economy has traditionally rested on shipbuilding, fishing and engineering, with tourism, life sciences, information technology and services growing in importance. The Volkswerft shipyard, long one of the city's major employers, built trawlers for the Soviet and other fleets in East German times, passed through several owners after 1990 and closed with the MV Werften bankruptcy of 2022; the city now runs the site as a maritime business park. The Hochschule Stralsund, founded in 1991 on the site of a former naval school, has around 2,500 students.

Most people live outside the old town, in Knieper, Franken and Grünhufe, where East German apartment blocks have been renovated and some torn down. Summer brings visitors heading for Rügen and Hiddensee, and the harbour fills with yachts; in winter the old town belongs to its residents again.

Stralsund claims a place in German food history through the Bismarck herring. According to local tradition, the fishmonger Johann Wiechmann sent a barrel of his herring to Otto von Bismarck in 1871 and received written permission to sell it under the chancellor's name; the letter is said to have been lost in the wartime bombing. Bismarckhering is now the common German name for pickled herring, fish cured first in salt and then in a solution of vinegar, salt and sugar, often with onions and spices.

The usual way to eat fish in town is the Fischbrötchen, a bread roll filled with Bismarck or soused herring, fried herring, rollmops, smoked mackerel or fried cod, with onions, pickles or remoulade, sold from stands and kiosks near the harbour. Rote Grütze, a sweet red-berry pudding from northern Germany and Denmark, is a common dessert.

Beer comes from the Störtebeker Braumanufaktur, a brewery in the city since 1827 and named, since 2011, after the pirate Klaus Störtebeker; it brews the Störtebeker and Stralsunder beers. Restaurants around the Alter Markt and the Neuer Markt, many of them in old merchants' houses and brick cellars, serve the fish and farmhouse cooking of Pomerania.